06 August 2009 — David Byrne on the Moral Value of Art
David Byrne posted this on his journal a while ago, before this site was active, but I thought I'd bring it up here. Byrne speaks from the perspective of an artist, of course, as opposed to that of an audience, and I like his relatively ambivalent take on how art affected his life.
So, was art good for me? It got me out of gym class, that’s for sure...
..But what about looking at pictures, as opposed to making them? I love doing it — my house and office are plastered with stuff — but I don’t see how it can be uplifting, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
One's life can be enriched by all manner of things, of course, and I think I'm too young to be able to judge what impact music has had and will have on my own. I can certainly think of ways in which my life is likely to be made a lot harder as a result of focussing on music so much, but that's kind of a given.